"I'm Over here Now"

At first the words would not come at all, just a half-hearted sentiment left on a Facebook page that would soon see more hits in a matter of hours than most people see in a week.

Or more!

We live in a time where the term friends is tossed around so loosely that the very word has lost its true meaning. The sheer number of friends has become almost like a status symbol, yet who am I to hypocritically preach about it? Currently, I boast a total of 349 friends, though not out loud. No one truly has in excess of three hundred plus friends, or a thousand, or several thousand.
Louie Appel had 1,690 when he left us on the evening of October 17th.

We were left speechless, physically and emotionally deflated.

Defeated.

Louie was a super hero with the obnoxious power to make people laugh...whether they wanted to or not.

All we can ask is, why when the world needs more super heroes, we are left with one less?

He was my hero, something I hadn't realized until his untimely passing.

He was loud, he was brash, he was vulgar at times.

All right, he was vulgar pretty much 99% of the time.

He was big.

For obvious reasons, he was the center of attention in every room he entered, but he stood taller than most and not just because of his size. He touched the lives of so many others, most likely without ever knowing it.

The world knows it now.

In a matter of hours, his Facebook page came alive, the outpouring of grief and sentiment reaching from far and wide.

He had a Rolodex as big as his heart and when the recipient on the other end of the phone would pick up, laughter would ensue.

I know.

I had witnessed it many times, often as he shirked the responsibilities of the workplace. I had the pleasure of working twice as hard alongside him, while his laughter reverberated loud enough to speed up the erosion of the walls where so much plaster had already chipped away on its own. Whoever he was speaking to would probably complain of a ringing in that ear for several hours, maybe days afterward. I'm convinced that I will forever experience some degree of hearing loss, most likely in both ears for the very same reason.

And I'm okay with that.

We always had music playing in that office. Going back in my collection to the mid-80's (something I continually do today), I chose a tape one afternoon of a Long Island band I'd had the pleasure of interviewing during my beloved college radio years.

"Who is this?" Louie asked with a keen ear tilted towards the speakers.

"This band that was on the second WBAB album back in '84. The Young Breed."

With the speed of a gunslinger in the wild west, he reached for his trusty black book, small enough to fit in his back pocket, but somehow with an infinite amount of pages contained within.

"Hey buddy, ya listenin' to this?" he addressed the answering machine of Jim Laird, the one time lead singer of The Young Breed and someone I hadn't seen nor heard from in at least a decade. I looked at him in awe, proudly holding the phone in front of the speaker and wondered silently, is there anyone you don't know?!

Louie gave me a second chance at a reckless youth I had longed to recapture, if only for a moment.

"I'm playing with John Eddie now," he told me in 1994.

"The Jungle Boy guy?" I asked incredulously, referring to a 1986 regional radio hit I had never much cared for.

"The band's great. You gotta come to a gig."

Most of the gigs were way down in South Jersey. In my corporate trappings at that time, I had left the bygone days of traveling to club gigs afar long behind. With reckless abandon however, I experienced a brief taste of life on the Rock and Roll road in the back of a maroon colored, beat up van driven by someone called "Ohmboy."

Peeling out of a Tom's River parking lot at the end of a late night, the three of us screaming "Bang, bang, just like that y'all," I could just make out the face of the former CBS recording artist in the wake of dust and debris left behind likely wondering if he might ever see us again.

The following afternoon, this wayward band of not so road weary travelers arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, far too early for a 10PM show-time. At 3PM we stepped out of the elevator and into the management office of Middle East where we were met with a combined look of fear and confusion from its proprietors; two brothers who I will say in the interest of political correctness were not from around here.
"Who are you guys?"

This, directed at me in a heavily accented voice tinged with angst.
I swear if it wasn't for my clean cut looks and harmless demeanor, one of them would have pulled a gun from the desk.

Instantly springing to action, my hero donned a Fez from a nearby shelf and without missing a beat disarmed the tense situation with a quote from my favorite rock and roll movie of all time.

"Tell 'em Jonetti and the Cruisers are here."

I laughed out loud.

The brothers remained silent.

I told you they weren't from around here.

Philadelphia was like a homecoming of sorts for John Eddie who apparently had spent a lot of time there in his youthful past. Louie felt eminently at home there as well, choosing to play the last set that evening in his underwear.

Then, Louie was comfortable anywhere.

In my mind, his greatest accomplishment was continually breathing life, if not restoring said life to a band that had literally given musical voice to all that is "Morty."

By the mid 1980's. Mazarin had become a local mainstay, poised on the verge of possibly becoming the next Long Island musical success story. When drummer Marc Mazarin chose that inopportune moment to depart for a honeymoon, Louie was called in. Slipping seamlessly into the driver's seat, the band had not missed a beat that summer. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of actually meeting him in those earliest days. Thankfully, I am blessed and lucky enough to vividly recall the last time we saw each other which seems like it was only yesterday. In reality, July really was just yesterday. Twenty-six years following his debut as an official Mazarin drummer, he had slipped right back where he was most comfortable.

I would be remiss in not slipping a small Debbie Gibson tale in here. For most who have known the big guy, it is no mystery that his first taste of success and super-stardom was as the drummer behind the teen pop sensation, something he had been continually reminded about in jest from far too many of his contemporaries. Following a long day in the corporate world, the two of us had ventured out to dinner one night on the company's dime.

"There's a diner around the corner," I suggested as we exited the stuffy confines of then financial powerhouse Paine Webber.

"F**k that," he answered. If it's on the company we're going to the Harley Davidson."

No better than the many tourists who surrounded us, we headed across the street to the overpriced New York City location of the Harley Davidson Cafe. Following an interminable wait before being seated, Louie slipped effortlessly into let's make the waitress uncomfortable mode. Embarrassed, dumbfounded, but used to it, I finally opened my mouth after several minutes of his good natured abuse and told her:

"Don't worry, he's harmless. He's the Debbie Gibson guy."

I don't know if her confusion stemmed from the fact that I had made little sense, or that she was most likely too young to remember who Debbie Gibson was.

"Go ahead," I instructed Louie. "Do that thing from the video."

That thing had been nothing more than ducking party streamers at a mock birthday celebration in the music video for the 80's hit, Out of the Blue.

Right on cue, Louie got real serious for a second.

We're talking dramatic actor serious.

With a few deep breaths for effect and an ounce or two of concentration, he perfectly recreated his award-winning moment with exuberance.

Our waitress was unmoved, unfazed, uninterested.

Or simply confused.

Had the crew who had shot and edited that video over a decade earlier been on hand, I'm convinced they would have used this take instead.

I envied his bravado, his lack of self-consciousness and his ability to make sure that wherever he went, people would be left with a lifelong impression. In recent years I was proud and honored to jokingly introduce him as my lil' brother. Let's face it. He was nobody's little anything.

He was my friend.

We weren't as close friends as so many others who are shedding tears of their own at this moment, but always stayed in touch over the last several decades, sometimes intermittenly as it had been recently, or with the occasional degree of regularity. Whether it had been months, or just a matter of days, whenever we spoke or got together, laughter was always paramount. I don't need to outline the number of incredible people he has worked with throughout his career, to illustrate just how big he was. He played and walked amongst some of the greatest because he was one himself. He wasn't a revered figurehead like the Pope, or the President, or The Boss.

He was simply Louie.

And people loved him.

One close friend started a Louie Appel Facebook fan page.

Just because he was Louie.

On a Facebook page overflowing with grief and sentiments one friend wrote simply: "I'm not crying for you. I'm crying for me."

When Louie passed in his sleep alone in a Las Vegas hotel room while on tour with John Eddie, one close friend vowed that he would not fly home alone.

Mikey Bones purchased a plane ticket and accompanied the big guy across the country.

Lou Appel left this earth with 1,690 friends.

Most likely a lot more than that.

And I am thoroughly convinced he loved each and every one of us.

All he ever wanted to with his life was play the drums and he accomplished that. He followed that dream, held on to it and never let go.

I envied that courage above all else.

He was my hero.

He left us with tears, he left us with smiles, he left us with anger in our hearts.

Anger because he should still be here.

Oddly, in Citizen Kane fashion, he left us with a cryptic Rosebud message displayed on his Facebook cover page.

"I'm over here now."

If Louie were with us right now, he would kick our collective asses for shedding all these tears.

Lil' Brother, wherever you are, I know that you are laughing there. If it's a bit too loud for the locals, don't worry about it. They'll get used to it. In the meantime, could you kick it up a notch or two so we can hear it over here?

We can sure use a little laughter on this side right now.

SEE YA!